Murphy – Cherokee Cellars, the newest hotspot in downtown, hosted an Author’s Night featuring local authors Mary Jo Dyre and Mary Ricketson on March 28.
The two authors read from their newest novels and poetry collections.
“We’re looking forward to hosting more events like this, as we’re becoming more aware of more authors in the area who’ve got connections to writing and publishing books based in this area.” owner Jim Duncan said.
Dyre began with a glimpse into her latest work, Springheads, which is set in both north Georgia and the Murphy area, with a poignant reading from her brother’s unfinished novel Dark Spot.
Knowing she belonged to this area after a storied career as having grown up in Mississippi with “that endless land, sky and water,” and utilizing the idea that “people have a curiosity about writers to begin with, that the audience wants to crawl inside our heads,” she then went on to describe how “our roots connect us” and how also that “air, sky, land and water” worked to connect her as an educator in both Mississippi and North Carolina. Settling here after her many years in the area, she decided this was the place for her – especially after a tragic accident, which left her with almost no choice but to leave circumstances rectified.
Given her brother’s tragic accident before the finalization of his own novel, Dark Spot, left her family asking her to fulfill his last work, Dyre seized the moment to make it hopefully a bound literary work.
“I had to. He would’ve wanted me to. To finish his work. To begin what I thought I could do as well.
“Left from an unfinished manuscript, I did this. The gift that was left to me,” she said, verging on tears.
After reading from both her brother’s first and then her new novel, she teased a bit about what is new and what is equally sequel.
“That is up to you, because I did borrow, but if you read one and then the other, you’ll know,” Dyre said. “I challenge you all to see where I took up my brother’s novel and how it ended.”
Tacitly, she made the crowd even more cognizant of her desire to always “travel the road less travelled,” alluding to that famously used Robert Frost line of poetry.
On that duly noted cusp of National Poetry Month, Ricketson came on the scene echoing Dyre’s and her own Mississippi roots, acknowledging her birth in one of the Deep South states, beginning her reading from her first poetry book, Mississippi: Stories of Luke and Marian.
Straight from an almost biblical perspective given the titular characters, Ricketson, a veteran of many a poetry reading in the area, corralled the crowd to listen to her take on having grown up in the era of Mississippi “difficulties” along with being written in the voice of her “parents’ youth,” which mirrored her own experiences as a young woman in the segregationist South.
Particularly affecting during Ricketson’s readings were her ode to the first African-American dentist in her small hometown along with her other readings from her newest collection, Stutters.
Whilst holding back emotion at the brink of tears, Ricketson relayed an affecting chronicle of her years overcoming her speech impediments from elementary school to her collegiate studies by learning to help others through studying and applying her work in social work and other areas.
When she talked about “finding connection through the connection of quiet of nature” to quiet both the mind and spirit, she continued the relay of her struggle to both communicate and be heard in a world full of the cacophony of habitation.
Duncan was glad to have had such a warm turnout for his first of what he hopes is many Author Nights.
“We want to support all the various arts in this wonderful community,” he said.
Details: Visit maryjodyre.com/post/springheads-the-novel-taps-the-lore-of-the-moon-eyed-people and maryricketson.com/poetry.